Edited by Neera Tanden and Matt Browne · thinking and the latest ideas in and out of Canada. My ... have the opportunity to lead the debate about the future of our global movement

New Ideas for the Future of the Progressive MovementEdited by Neera Tanden and Matt Browne

New Ideas for the Future of the Progressive Movement

With contributions from

Lodewijk AsscherTony BlairMatt BrowneBill ClintonSigmar GabrielRicardo LagosAndrew LittleConstance Milstein

Tom PitfieldMatteo RenziBill ShortenJonas Gahr StøreNeera TandenHelle Thorning-SchmidtJustin TrudeauHamdi Ulukaya

March 2016

Contents 1 Preface Tom Pitfield, President of Canada 2020

3 Forewords Constance Milstein and Hamdi Ulukaya, Patrons, Global Progress

7 A Future Built on Global Progress Neera Tanden and Matt Browne, Center for American Progress

13 Past as Prelude 15 Tony Blair, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

19 Bill Clinton, Founder of the Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of the United States

23 Ricardo Lagos, Former President of Chile

29 Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Former Prime Minister of Denmark

35 Challenges of Today 37 Matteo Renzi, Prime Minister of Italy

43 Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

49 Lodewijk Asscher, Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands

55 Sigmar Gabriel, Vice Chancellor of Germany

61 Future of Global Progress 61 Andrew Little, Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party

69 Bill Shorten, Leader of the Australian Labor Party

75 Jonas Gahr Støre, Leader of the Norwegian Labour Party

82 About the Authors

GLOBAL PROGRESS

Preface 1

PrefaceTom Pitfield, President of Canada 2020

This year, Canada 2020 celebrates its 10th anniversary.

We have come a long way over the past decade, and there is much for us to celebrate. I hope, however, that the decade ahead holds even more promise for the progressive ideals we cherish. They are needed now more than ever, both in Canada and around the world.

From our conception, it is fair to say that Canada 2020 sought to be not just the pre-eminent progressive think tank at home, but also a conduit for the transit of fresh thinking and the latest ideas in and out of Canada. My founding partners and I recognized that in a globalized world, insights and knowledge from abroad could help us think differently about the challenges we faced. While

every country has its own unique history, many of the challenges we face are similar in nature.

Participating in the Global Progress network has, there-fore, been crucial to our success and to the revival of progressive politics in Canada. We are delighted to be partnering with the Center for American Progress on this volume and to share the inspiration we found and the friendships we built with the wider progressive commu-nity. Today, the marketplace for new ideas is global. And for the first time in a generation, Canadian progressives have the opportunity to lead the debate about the future of our global movement with pride. It is an opportunity that we at Canada 2020 intend to seize.

We look forward to building global progress together.

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Forewords 3

ForewordsConstance Milstein and Hamdi Ulukaya, Patrons, Global Progress

In the spring of 2002—at Hartwell House in Buckinghamshire, England—I had the honor of hosting a discussion between former U.S. President Bill Clinton, then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and a prestigious group of progressives from across Europe. The meeting had been convened to discuss how to meet the challenges of a new conservatism that was threatening the dominance of progressive ideas. As we debated and shared ideas into the early hours of the morning, I became convinced that such an exchange of ideas was essential to helping our movement rise to the challenges of the 21st century.

Unfortunately, in the years that followed these discus-sions, this new conservatism did indeed triumph in the United States and much of Europe. During that time,

many of the challenges confronting our planet were ignored or grew worse. Today more than ever, they need a progressive solution. For that to happen, however, a new generation of leaders needs to develop and share their own ideas for how best to respond. It was my desire to help this ambition become a reality that led me to support the Center for American Progress and to agree to become a patron of its Global Progress initiative.

The insights from world leaders that have engaged with Global Progress—and are compiled in this volume—help set the stage for what I hope will be a new golden era of progressive governance. I look forward to participating in the discussions to come and working together to achieve global progress. — Constance Milstein

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Stuart Ramson/AP Im

ages for Tent Foundation

❛❛The refugee crisis is the greatest humanitarian challenge of our generation.

❜❜

Forewords 5

The modern world is confronted with a host of new global crises, many of which are unprec-edented in scale. The crisis that troubles me the most is the exponential growth of the number of refugees and displaced people across the globe. Today, there are more than 60 million refugees or internally displaced people in the world. It is perhaps the greatest humanitarian challenge of our generation.

Troublingly, we have also seen what was initially a humanitarian crisis grow into a political and economic one. The rise of a toxic discourse of xenophophia, fear, and exclusion have made it all too easy for people to try and sidestep their responsibilities for finding shared solutions.

I established the Tent Foundation to focus on the plight of refugees. Tent’s mission is to improve the livelihoods of those who have been forcibly displaced around the globe, and it works to promote innovation and create new part-nerships to help the displaced realize their full potential.

Fortunately, with the help of Global Progress, a new gen-eration of political leaders who understand the strength of diversity and its power to drive economic growth is emerging. This generation is more open to collaboration and partnership with the private sector and civil society in promoting new and innovative ways of rising to the global challenges we all face.

I’m honored to have had the opportunity to engage in these discussions and look forward to finding new ways of working together to meet the challenges ahead. — Hamdi Ulukaya

The Center for American Progress thanks Constance Milstein and Hamdi Ulukaya for their support of Global Progress and of this booklet. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the Center for American Progress and the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of Constance Milstein or Hamdi Ulukaya. The Center for American Progress produces independent research and policy ideas driven by solutions that we believe will create a more equitable and just world.

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Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt discuss progressive challenges at the Global Progress meeting at

the United Nations in New York, December 2010.

Center for American Progress

A Future Built on Global Progress 7

A Future Built on Global ProgressNeera Tanden and Matt Browne, Center for American Progress

Today, progressives across the world are confronting similar challenges—from promoting middle-class growth to combatting climate change and advancing inclusive politics. Developed countries such as the United States face stagnant wages, a disappearing middle class, and a resurgence of grassroots populism on both sides of the political spectrum.

In 2009, the Center for American Progress created the Global Progress initiative, a network of like-minded think tanks across the globe that sought to advance progressive policy ideas. The idea behind the initiative was simple: Progressives in America and around the world could benefit from a more systematic approach to sharing ideas, knowledge, and best practices in order to respond to global challenges. While each country is unique, in a globalized world, many of our problems are not: We can learn from each other.

For the past eight years, the Global Progress initiative has brought together the founders of the global progres-sive movement with current and future leaders to discuss how progressives can overcome obstacles and lead a new, global progressive movement. From Washington to

Amsterdam, Paris to Sydney, the Global Progress initia-tive has led discussions with world leaders, intellectuals, activists, and like-minded think tanks to shape a progres-sive agenda for the 21st century. By committing to more inclusive politics, we can help build sustainable societies where prosperity is shared more equitably and govern-ments work better for their people. The essays in this volume support our progressive vision and offer a road map for the future.

The world stands on the cusp of a new, global progres-sive movement. People around the globe are dissatisfied with their governments and eager for change, and many have turned once more to progressivism. In Europe, for example, where austerity once prevailed, the rise of new leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has shown that modern center-left politics can inspire voters and deliver real change. And in Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has led a new movement of inclusive and inspirational politics to end more than a decade of conservative power. We are convinced that Trudeau and Renzi will become paragons of the progressive movement. And at this crucial moment in American politics as pro-gressives look to build on the achievements of President

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❛❛Progressives need to show that we can respond to rising inequality, increased global competition, and technological innovation in a way that rebuilds and strengthens the middle class.

❜❜Barack Obama, we hope this global reflection on the future of progressive politics provides a fresh perspective on debates in the United States.

Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Ricardo Lagos, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt reflect on how their experience in office and the renewal of progressive governance can help leaders around the world—particularly in Africa, Asia, and the Americas—as they confront new challenges. Matteo Renzi, Justin Trudeau, Sigmar Gabriel, and Lodewijk Asscher address the complex emergence of new popu-list anti-politics, the need to tackle rising inequality and promote opportunity, and the importance of developing a more open and inclusive politics. Finally, Andrew Little, Bill Shorten, and Jonas Gahr Støre show us the importance of a value-based agenda while reminding us that a progres-sive approach to creating inclusive and prosperous societ-ies is not only more just, but also more effective.

Every contribution touches on at least one of the three core challenges facing today’s progressives: economic inequality, institutional reform, and political renewal. The future success of the global progressive movement depends upon our ability to confront these challenges in new and convincing ways.

First, when it comes to the economy, progressives need to show that we can respond to rising inequality, increased global competition, and technological innova-tion in a way that rebuilds and strengthens the middle class. The institutional dilemma requires progressives to use our passion, energy, and creativity to make govern-ment responsive, effective, and transparent. The political dilemma requires progressives to defend our values and fight for what we know is right, to renew our spirit and retool our efforts, and to rebuild our movements to meet the needs of a new century. If more and more people lose faith in economic opportunity and the chance to prosper—for themselves and their children—it will undermine progressive policies.

In 2014, the economic dilemma led the Center for American Progress to establish the Inclusive Prosperity Commission. Chaired by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers and U.K. Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls, the commission studied the causes of wage stagnation in advanced economies and made recommendations to address the growing problem. These included ensuring full employment and fair wages for every worker through more investments in infrastruc-ture and support for renewable energy coupled with a


strong minimum wage; rewarding companies that share profits with workers at every income level; and modern-izing employment laws to limit the ability of firms to cut costs by classifying workers as subcontractors instead of full-time employees with benefits.

The commission also advocated for making markets work in the public interest and the long term by reforming cor-porate governance to ensure that workers—not just share-holders—benefit from increased productivity. Raising workers’ skill levels is also critical to increasing growth in the long term and the employment and life opportunities of workers themselves. That’s why the commission also called for improvements to early learning and childhood education, schools, universities, vocational training, and apprenticeship programs. Finally, the commission argued that progressives need to push for essential public invest-ments in infrastructure in order to keep pace with our growing population and economies and to help our soci-eties meet the new demands of the global information age.

We must also address political reform to ensure the sus-tainability of the progressive cause. Many people have lost faith in political answers, and over time, this cynicism has undermined trust in government too. To build support for these improvements, progressives need to show that we have ideas for improving how governments work. This brings us to the second challenge—institutional reform. Progressives need to outline a new vision for modern gov-ernment in the 21st century, one that embraces citizens’ call for greater transparency and provides a foundation for smarter and more effective decision-making, and leverages

the latest innovations in information and communications technology and big data. In the United States, tackling campaign finance rules will also be a crucial element of this renewal and essential to ensuring that government works for everyone, not just for special interests.

With the rise of big data and the reach of social media, progressives have an opportunity to make government more responsible, effective, and transparent. By making public information and services more readily and easily available, governments can restore public confidence and grow a new generation of engaged citizens.

New technologies are already revolutionizing how govern-ments respond to social challenges and deliver public goods. By embracing these advancements, governments can cut waste and streamline bureaucracy.

But just as online communications, social media, and increasing demands will force a revolution in government, they will also change how progressives do politics and hopefully help us rise to the third challenge—political renewal. Barack Obama’s 2008 victory ushered in a new wave of progressive leaders with new communications tools to help them reach a wider audience. They have opened their parties to new supporters, new ideas, and new ways of doing things. The leadership primary process adopted by the Italian Democratic Party and the French left are just two good examples of such experiments and have raised the profiles of young leaders such as Prime Minister Renzi and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

10 GLOBAL PROGRESS

Tony Blair speaks at the Global Progress meeting at the United Nations in New York, December 2010.

In many political cultures, there is resistance to such change from both old party elites and rank-and-file members. Change is disruptive, but resistance to change is a risky strategy. Many young people no longer view organized politics or traditional political parties as the best route to improving their lives or engaging with the issues they care about. When mainstream political par-ties seem exclusive, elitist, and out of touch, they sow the seeds of populism. Yet as the contributions to this volume illustrate, progressives can overcome the wave of cynicism and anti-politics that has engulfed parties on

both sides. By demanding institutional reform, inclusive politics, and inclusive prosperity, progressives can unify a movement for change.

The Global Progress initiative at the Center for American Progress will continue to play its own small part to revive progressive governance across the globe. By fostering dia-logue and working with a new generation of leaders, the global progressive movement will build on the progress we have made. And together, we will secure the progres-sive future our children deserve.



12 GLOBAL PROGRESS: XX subtitle XX

The experiences of previous periods of progressive governance illustrate that it is possible to marry social justice with a dynamic market economy in order to deliver shared prosperity. In this opening section, successful leaders evaluate how their experience of previous periods of progressive governance can inform the challenges of today. How has government been used to empower people and provide them with the tools to make a success of their own lives? How can the ideals of shared opportunity and shared responsibility be renewed to help inform a new era of progressive leadership? ››

PAST AS PRELUDE

PAST AS PRELUDE 13

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PAST AS PRELUDE: Tony Blair 15

Third Way, AgainTony Blair, Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

❛❛We need to balance a thriving private sector with an efficient and competent public sector.

❜❜

I remember the 1999 Florence Conference on Progressive Governance conference so well. It came at a time of great tension in Europe and the Balkans. It was the first time anyone could recall that a Democrat U.S. president and pro-gressive left European politicians had come together on the same platform to celebrate what we had in common.

So there we were late at night in the sumptuous Florentine surroundings, where the very walls and paintings were suffused with political history, debating political ideas—actually, a new political idea.

This could never have happened without President Bill Clinton, who had the intellec-tual skill to converse in terms the European left could understand without alienating the American public.

But it also came at the right time in the shift in political zeitgeist.

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❛❛The center ground of politics is in danger. It doesn’t actually make the most noise. But it is still where a large part of the public is.

❜❜Just before the advent of a new century, it became very clear the old policy thinking had to change.

The 20th century revealed that without the capacity of the state to guarantee certain key protections and provide basic services for citizens, then the objective of a more just society in which opportunity would be opened up to all could not succeed. In this way, we needed to tax fairly and to spend in order to attain social justice. And we built the institutions of the welfare state.

However, over time as the institutions of collective power grew and ordinary people became payers of tax, it became plain that the state could also abuse power, spend unwisely, and be a vested interest standing in the way of necessary change. Likewise, the civil society counterparts of the state—trade unions—could do the same.

Hence, the concept of the Third Way came about, which was and is essentially a project of modernization. The world has changed, and we must change with it. This is not about abandoning principle; on the contrary, it is about applying it but with the courage and imagination to do so in the light of a world vastly different from the one of previous gen-erations. It is absolutely rooted in the progressive, not conservative, tradition of politics. But it accepts as a reality that for the original goals of progressive politics to be achieved, we have to reform the way that collective power, including state power, operates. We have to make sure the state, if it spends, spends wisely; that services are run for the benefit of those who depend on them; that issues like crime, seen as the preserve of the right, are taken seriously by the left; and that we are the champions of a competitive and entrepre-neurial private sector, as well as organized labor.

It is great that Third Way ideas are back in vogue. This is not just in parts of Europe.

PAST AS PRELUDE: Tony Blair 17

Virtually wherever I go in the world from Latin America to the Far East, Third Way think-ing is getting a hearing. This is for a very simple reason: It speaks to the critical balance that most sensible people want to strike in public policy. That is a balance that unites a thriving private sector with an efficient and competent public sector, providing services of quality to the citizen and social protection for those who are vulnerable. And it focuses on practical, evidence-based policies that work, not on ideological solutions that may get a round of applause among party activists but are completely unrealistic in the real world.

Looking back at the commentary of the time is instructive. Many accused both me and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of acting like conservatives, and we were told our reforms would never work. In fact, he laid the basis for the German economic moderniza-tion, and I won three consecutive elections for full terms of government by implementing reforms—previously, the British Labour Party had never won even two.

Today, the Third Way is more relevant than ever. We can see this around the debate in Europe. The right wants austerity; the old left resists the necessary structural reform. The result is perilously close to stagnation, with a real risk of a political fallout that overwhelms sensible mainstream European politics. In fact, what is clear is that we need policies for growth combined with structural reform. The political leaders trying to make such reforms need to know that their economies can grow. Fiscal policy must encourage this and not leave everything up to a monetary stimulus that can keep the euro alive but cannot by itself make the eurozone economy healthy.

The center ground of politics—in Europe, including the United Kingdom—is in dan-ger. It doesn’t usually make the most noise. It operates best in the quiet chambers of analysis and reflection. It seeks to build consensus rather than exploit rifts. But it is still where a large part of the public wishes to congregate. They urgently need the leader-ship of people like Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, and, most recently, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. There couldn’t be a better time to renew the Third Way.

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PAST AS PRELUDE: Bill Clinton 19

Moving Forward TogetherBill Clinton, Founder of the Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of the United States

❛❛The role of government is to empower people with the tools to make the most of their own lives.

❜❜

A little more than 15 years ago, progressive leaders from around the world gathered in the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance hoping to develop the policies and politics necessary to unleash another age of progress, discovery, and creativity.

The entire world was at a crossroads. Since the end of the Cold War less than a decade earlier, the forces of interdependence had swept the globe, with new scientific and tech-nological advances revolutionizing the ways people lived, worked, and interacted with one another. Borders were starting to look more like nets than like walls, with the lines between foreign and domestic policy growing increasingly blurred. We knew that the coming century held both great promise and great peril and that either way we would rise or fall together.

The idea behind the Florence Conference on Progressive Governance, like all of our Third Way meetings, was simple. We believed that as progressive leaders, there was value in learning from one another’s experiences and in creating networks of support for policies that would spur growth, lift lives, and raise standards both within our nations

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❛❛Wherever people are pursing inclusive politics, economics, and social policy, good things are happening.

❜❜

and around the world. We believed in shared opportunity and shared responsibility, and we rejected the false choices that too often pollute dialogue and obstruct smart gover-nance—business or labor, economy or environment, private sector or public sector. We believed that the role of government was to empower people with the tools to make the most of their own lives and to create the institutions and conditions for them to succeed. We believed that results meant more than rhetoric, so we focused on what works.

This approach had served us well in the United States during my presidency, when we added 22.9 million jobs, moved 7.7 million people from poverty to the middle class, and enjoyed the first four consecutive budget surpluses since before the Great Depression.1 I thought I could share some of the lessons I had learned about dealing with the domestic pressures and political challenges I had encountered when enacting my policies, which many of my colleagues in Florence were currently facing. I also knew I could learn a lot from leaders like U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who had innovative ideas about how to lead their own countries and the international community into the 21st century.

Our meeting in Florence was spirited and substantive, as we worked late into the night at the Palazzo Vecchio on issues ranging from inequality to security to human rights to trade. And while we certainly didn’t find an answer for every question, we came away with a unifying vision that respected our interesting differences but recognized that our common humanity and shared future mattered more.

The past 15 years have shown us that the world will only continue to get smaller, spread-ing and intensifying the impact of both the positive and negative forces of interdepen-dence. And we’ve learned again and again that the most effective way to increase the positive forces—and contain and reduce the negative ones—is through networks of creative cooperation.

PAST AS PRELUDE: Bill Clinton 21

Take, for example, the impressive growth across much of sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades. With help in part from international policies in which aid, trade, and invest-ment reinforce one another—like the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative and the United States’ African Growth and Opportunity Act—many African countries have increased their capacity, strengthened their institutions, and improved the quality of life for their people. Sub-Saharan Africa’s average real GDP growth rate was 4.9 percent from 2000 to 2008, and today it remains one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.2 We’re all better off for it, and we must continue to find ways to help the countries that have not yet reached their potential.

The evidence is clear all over the world that wherever people are pursuing inclusive politics, economics, and social policy through networks of cooperation, good things are happening. Yet too much of our world is still plagued by economic inequality and divisive identity-based politics. That’s why I believe the lessons of the Florence conference are still relevant today, and I hope the rising generation of progressive leaders will carry the torch and continue to work together toward a future of shared participation, shared prosperity, and shared values.

Endnotes 1 Center for American Progress, “Power of Progressive Econom-

ics: The Clinton Years” (2011). 2 McKinsey Global Institute, “Lions on the move: The progress

and potential of African economies” (2010).

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PAST AS PRELUDE: Ricardo Lagos 23

Progressive Governance in PerspectiveRicardo Lagos, Former President of Chile

❛❛The progressive governance dialogues challenged traditional policy paradigms.

❜❜

The progressive governance dialogues began at the close of the 20th century after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of the Soviet system did not bring about the end of history, as some claimed. It did, however, inspire a fundamental rethinking among social democrats and progressives about how to approach a new world order characterized by globalization and the information technology revolution.

In parallel, an increasingly complex set of societal changes were also taking place; strict social classes, the nuclear family, and traditional gender roles were giving way to a more diverse postmodern society. In this context, it had become increasingly apparent that progressive politics needed to find fresh answers to both the new and the traditional challenges of our world.

The Third Way renewal of progressive politics that shaped these discussions sought to accept the strengths of some areas of the economy and understand the limits of others. The challenge was one of identifying how public policies could combine the capacities of the state, social groups, and civil society with those of market forces. This

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entailed not only a new set of policies, but also a new way of doing progressive politics. And it was these challenges that gave rise to the first progressive governance meeting in Florence in 1999 and subsequent gatherings in Poznan (a small town near Berlin), Stockholm, London, and elsewhere. The discussions at these meetings were often char-acterized by an intense debate about how best to strengthen democratic institutions, stimulate higher growth, and improve social justice. This was progressivism in action.

During these discussions, we challenged traditional progressive policy paradigms. For example, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s approach to innovation and change in labor relations was highly controversial. Liberalizing the labor market seemed coun-terintuitive to many. Yet Schroeder illustrated it was possible to do it in line with social democratic values. Through the policy of so-called flexicurity, his government helped workers adapt to changes in global competition by helping to support unemployed worker’s income and providing better training to learn new skills and perform new tasks. These reforms have since been crucial to the success of the German economy.

Today in 2015, the world has changed enormously. The global economic crisis of 2008 has posed a significant challenge to progressive politics. This crisis raised profound questions about a neoliberal ideology that favored deregulation of the economy and allowed the financial system to self-regulate. Prior to the crisis, a wave of unbridled capitalism had swept across the globe. After the crisis, all political leaders—from President Bush to President Obama, from President Sarkozy to President Hollande, and from Prime Minister Brown to Prime Minister Cameron—rejected the idea of self-regulation in the financial markets.

The global economic crisis, like the fall of the Berlin Wall earlier, necessitates a deep reflection on the future of progressive politics. This single moment forced everyone to discuss how the international economic system was governed. It is somewhat ironic that it was the conservative U.S. President George W. Bush who called the first G-20 leaders meeting. Yet by September 2008, it was clear that the G-7 (or G-8 with Russia) was no longer capable of responding to the crisis alone. The participation of leaders from emerg-ing economies was now necessary.


❛❛The global financial crisis, like the fall of the Berlin Wall before it, necessitated a rethink of progressive politics.

❜❜

Just as there was a need to bring a new institution to life, there was also a need to forge an active consensus on how to respond. Upon reflection, it is remarkable that U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s leadership of the G-20 was able to provide such a clear and concise response in March 2009. The London summit he hosted helped the world avoid depression, creating a consensus on the need to immediately revive the economy with new capital flows. It took just 30 minutes for the G-20 to agree to raise International Monetary Fund capital reserves from $250 billion to $750 billion.1

It was at the next G-20 in Pittsburgh, however, when this consensus began to unravel. Differences in strategy began to emerge, and the lack of a common progressive vision became apparent. While President Barack Obama stressed the need to revive the economy through investments similar to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s approach in the New Deal, austerity politics had begun to take hold in Europe. European social democrats had lost the argument.

Looking back, it is hard to determine why the progressive collaboration that seemed so obvious in Florence and Poznan was not possible after the crisis. Why did progressives not use the crisis as an opportunity to have their say?

In September 2000, President Bill Clinton and I had a conversation at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. By then, he already suspected that progressives were beginning to lose the argument. I found it hard to believe that George W. Bush could be set to defeat Al Gore. President Clinton himself had already snatched the classical Republican flags of balanced budgets for progressives. Over the course of his presidency, he had proven that progressives not only took macroeconomic matters seriously, but moreover that we were better at delivering on them. He, alongside other leaders from the progressive governance era, had illustrated that true social democrats were not populists and that we did not believe in shortcuts. On the contrary—as Wim Kok, the former prime minister of the Netherlands said—we believed in hard work, which is very different.

Seven years on from the global economic crisis, we should not be surprised that there has still not been a full economic recovery. A full recovery would have required an

26 GLOBAL PROGRESS

unequivocally progressive response. Looking ahead, we must hope that a new generation of European progres-sives, led by Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, will succeed where others have failed. For if they fail, less-responsible populist leaders have shown they are waiting to seize the opportunity.

Renzi and Valls, like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada, are right when they emphasize the need to focus on growth to reduce inequalities and, in particular, to pay down the tremendous deficits that have accumulated through economic stagnation. It is a paradox that countries that only a short time ago were held up as an example of good governance—for example, Spain—had to incur large fiscal deficits to save the financial sector and now encumber their entire population with insurmountable debt. This is a serious failing of the social democratic response to the crisis, one that now challenges the legitimacy of democratic institutions themselves and that feeds the anger and alienation of a dangerous populism on the extreme left and right. It is time for a new approach in Europe.

Similarly, in Latin America, the answers of yesterday are also not an effective response to today’s challenges and those of the future. Over the past 20 years, Latin America has seen profound changes in its economy and its social fabric. Chile is an eloquent example. Between 1990 and 2010, not only was democracy consolidated, but the proportion of people living in poverty fell from 40 percent to just 10 percent. During the same period, gross domestic product per capita raised from approximately $5,000 to $20,000, with only a slight increase in the levels of inequality.2 A new emerging middle class—with ample access to credit and higher education but also highly indebted—has developed. The same is true in Brazil, Peru, and many other countries across the continent. This new and emerging middle class is an opportunity for the region and the globe. It provides a new consumer base for local and international goods and services. But if progressives don’t provide good answers to their need for better public services and continued eco-nomic growth, this opportunity may be lost.

❛❛A full economic recovery from the crisis requires an unequivocally progressive response and new leadership.

❜❜


Across the globe, then, there is a world of new challenges ahead; new challenges that can become opportunities with a new way of thinking. As we have done before, progressives must once again lead the way with new analyses and new ideas. It is time for a new generation of progressives to answer the eternal questions of how to deepen democracy, achieve greater social justice, and ultimately, how to build an inclusive society that ensures the dignity of every human being and wherein everyone has their place in the sun.

Endnotes 1 The Economist, “The IMF: Mission: possible,” April 8, 2009. 2 U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Carib-

bean, “Statistical Yearbook” (2014).

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PAST AS PRELUDE: Helle Thorning-Schmidt 29

The Lonely Life of a ProgressiveHelle Thorning-Schmidt, Former Prime Minister of Denmark

❛❛The foundations of personal freedom are institutions that ensure fairness.

❜❜

One of my predecessors in Danish politics, former Prime Minister Viggo Kampmann, often famously said, “It’s wonderful being a social democrat.” This was back in 1962. At that time, the Nordic social democratic parties would easily win 40 percent of the vote at elections—making them by far the largest and most influential political parties in their respective countries. Social democrats were the undisputed center of political thought and action during those years. The sky was the limit. And being a social democrat was the very definition of what it meant to be progressive. A bright future lay ahead.

I agree with Viggo Kampmann, it is indeed wonderful to be a social democrat. I also believe there is no alternative. But, I’d like to add, it sure isn’t easy.

What distinguishes progressives from both the conservatives on the right and the far left is that at the core of our political DNA, we share a determination to seek influence and act responsibly. We also know that governing responsibly comes

30 GLOBAL PROGRESS

❛❛Progressives should take more pride in the size of education budgets than the scale of social transfers.

❜❜

with a price—especially at times when tough choices need to be made, severe economic challenges faced, and new global risks tackled.

Today, social democrats are criticized from the left and the right. From the left, we are attacked for not spending more on welfare or for daring to reform our outdated welfare state and public services. The members of the far left now loudly proclaim themselves to be the true social democrats and progressives, asserting that we are mere echoes of neoliberal dogma. From the right, on the other hand, the conservatives argue that we are still spending too much on welfare and that we don’t care enough about the fundamentals of the economy.

Leading a progressive government can be a lonely place, especially when you are being attacked from both the left and the right. Still, it’s the only place to be—governing with responsibility, guided by our values, and driven by the ambition to see them realized anew in the modern era.

Social democrats will always stand up for a fair society. The foundations of personal freedom are institutions that ensure fairness.

Yet our definition of what constitutes a fair society cannot simply be based on how much wealth we redistribute. We cannot be preoccupied by a simplified and technical discussion on Gini coefficients. Even in highly developed welfare societies such as those in the Nordic countries,



there is a significant opportunity gap. Being born in to the “right” family is still the most important factor affecting educational attainment, lifetime income, and personal health. That is why progressives must now be judged on how effective we are at helping to create wealth, as well as by the inventiveness and success of our policies in delivering equality of opportunities for all our citizens. That is why the Danish Social Democrats are committed to crafting a strong balance between markets and social justice. That is why we take more pride in the size of our educational budgets than in the scale of social transfers. Our boldest ambition is to invest in people in order for them to be self-reliant in a modern society shaped by information technology and global competition.

Social democrats, then, build a fair society by harnessing the dynamism of a strong and vibrant social market economy. We know from history that the market economy is the most powerful engine to secure growth and create wealth. But we also understand that markets have failings. This is why we believe in regulation that ensures markets function for the benefit of all. That is why we are so concerned with reform of the financial sector, to ensure it is more stable and efficient.

The social market economy also needs to be sustainable in all its dimensions. As social democrats, we must be concerned about the deficit. Structural deficits not only hamper our prospects for economic growth in the short term, they also burden future generations with unfair debt.

The social democratic vision of a just society is one in which rights and opportunities come with obligations and duties. Yes, we want to invest in people, but people have a matching obligation to provide for themselves and their family if they can. Social democrats are also, by tradition and by inclination, strong and committed internationalists. We know that we cannot solve climate change acting in isolation, we need to act together. We know that we cannot regulate the financial sector on our own, we need to act together. We know that we cannot halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons alone, we can only do this together. We know that we cannot cope with global terrorism and extremism one nation at a time, we must build a global coalition and work in close collaboration with one

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another. We know that we cannot tackle the refugee crisis by acting alone, we have to agree on cross-national solutions. At the heart of this internationalism, we need a strong trans-Atlantic cooperation that can be the backbone of an ever-expanding alliance of democracies.

In these turbulent times, social democrats stand up for political leadership, even though it is a lonely life.

Over the years, the opportunity to meet with fellow progressive leaders from around the globe—through the progressive governance and global progress dialogues—has helped build a strong political community that transcends national boundaries. These gatherings, such as the one I hosted in Copenhagen in 2013, provide us with an opportunity to share new policy ideas, compare political strategies, and revitalize our spirits for the battles ahead. As reformers and modernizers, progressives are bound to face endless allegations and dreadful attacks from both left and the right. Yet as we each work to reform our societies to respond to the structural changes that will shape our future, staying true to our values is what defines our leadership.

This leadership is what being progressive is all about. That is why, despite all the difficulties we face, it is still wonderful to be a social democrat.

❛❛A fair society cannot simply be based on how much wealth we distribute, but also on how effective we are at creating wealth.

❜❜



CHALLENGES OF TODAY 35

Rising inequality, climate change, the growth of populism, and increased skepticism in politics are presenting new and urgent challenges for progressive governance. Fortunately, a new generation of leaders is rising to the occasion. In this section, these current leaders share their experiences of opening up the political process, developing a politics of aspiration, tackling economic growth and stagnant wages, and ensuring a sustainable planet for all. Informed by the lessons of the past, the latest knowledge, and the best practices of today, the contributors here are charting an agenda that is set to herald a new era of global progress. ››

CHALLENGESOF TODAY

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CHALLENGES OF TODAY: Matteo Renzi 37

Toward a New Progressive PoliticsMatteo Renzi, Prime Minister of Italy

❛❛The renewal of progressive governance must begin with a re-invention of how we do politics.

❜❜

At the close of the 20th century, the fate of the modernizing left was intimately tied to the Third Way. The Third Way renewal of progressive governance was a passionate, critical, and evidence-driven approach. It was an approach that sought to provide individual freedom and social justice by shaping an agenda for change that tran-scended the blind reliance on the market typified by the right and the traditional statist ideology of the left. The success of the Third Way illustrated that it is indeed possible to renew progressive thinking in order to meet new challenges. Today, however, the task of defining progressive governance is more difficult than it was then.

The Third Way only had to contend with two old conservatisms, one on the right and the other on the left. Today, these outdated traditions have been joined by a new foe, an amorphous populism that appeals to base prejudices and fills political vacuums. In Europe in particular, this populism has been particularly successful, though it is evident elsewhere. For many citizens across the continent, a lack of interest in politics is now a badge of pride. Concern with understanding problems and finding solutions has been replaced with an obsessive need to identify enemies and persecute them. While populism occasionally

38 GLOBAL PROGRESS

Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and Antonio Guterres discuss the

challenges of progressive governance in Florence, Italy,

November 1999.

touches upon real problems or attacks the true opponents of change, it always lacks cred-ible solutions. Simply put, today’s populists are as conventional and narrow-minded as the conservatives who resisted change in the past.

Our challenge today is to find a new path: one that is mindful of past progress, but also one that transcends both the old conservatisms and the loud and incessant stammers of the populists. This path can build on the lessons of progressive governance developed under U.S. President Bill Clinton’s leadership, but these lessons will be but a foundation. Clinton, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the other Third Way leaders succeeded in modernizing progressive politics by proposing a liberal humanism. Their approach was built on a new dialectic between the freedom given to the market to provide opportu-nity and prosperity and a revised role of the state that sought to ensure the extension of opportunity to all.

Liberal humanism is as relevant to progressive politics today as it was then. Unfortunately, though, it is no longer a sufficient basis upon which to build a new progressive agenda.

AP Photo/Herbert Knosow

ski


❛❛For many citizens, a lack of interest in politics is now a badge of pride. The politics of skepticism is our most significant challenge.

❜❜

Populism is an unconventional enemy, though it joins progressive politics’ two old adver-saries in imposing its presence, screaming loudly, and spreading a politics of fear. It is, how-ever, the politics of skepticism it feeds that is the most significant challenge today. The only way to defeat and neutralize populism is to respond to the public’s legitimate demands for greater transparency and new forms of leadership. While in the past the renewal of progressive politics required that we reinvent our policies, today the renewal of progressive politics must begin with a reinvention of how we do politics and how we govern.

As globalization and the information communication revolution have intensified, democracies across the globe need to become accustomed to making faster decisions and more effective in how they represent their people. At the same time, as deference toward elected representatives has fallen, citizens increasingly demand that the ways in which decision are made become more transparent. While this is a new challenge, progressive politicians must also seize this transformation as an opportunity. Transparency, com-bined with the use of new communication tools and networks, can and must help close the gap that people currently feel from politicians and the institutions of government.

The need for greater speed and greater transparency in decision-making is a historically new challenge for democratic thought and practice. And it is only once progressives have met this institutional challenge that we can begin to take on the difficult task of defining an economic and social agenda aimed at making the world a better place.

In short, trust and connectivity is now a prerequisite for progressive politics.

As we rise to these challenges, we must be wary of the left’s tendency to become attached to policies and achievements of the past. It is this tendency that often leads the left to become conservative. We cannot defend past policies and outdated institutions when it has become apparent that they are now the main obstacle to achieving our future goals. This is the pro-gressive paradox: Only the continuous renewal of how we realize the ideals of freedom and justice ensures historically that the left continues down the endless path toward progress.

We must, then, be careful not to canonize the Third Way, even if it is an object of our affection. For many, the Third Way has been the political compass, a guide rather than

40 GLOBAL PROGRESS

a simple tool of orientation. This cannot be the case for today’s generation of leaders. When Bill Clinton and Tony Blair summoned progressives from around the world to Florence in 1999, I was but 24 years old. While I was already convinced that politics could be a force for good, at that time, I came to believe that it must be based on partici-pation and choice, commitment and responsibility.

Yet in this season of great change in the global information age, an old compass can point us in the wrong direction. Today, the profound social, economic, and democratic changes taking place are often as unexpected as sudden shifts in magnetic fields that make the old compass needle jump. Today, only a new compass—built with the passions and intel-ligence of the past but informed and inspired by the knowledge and challenges of the day—can effectively serve as our guide.

The reform efforts that we are making in Italy, from increasing tax credits to the working poor to our agenda for institutional and electoral reform, are based on such an approach. Aligned as they are with similar initiatives implemented by progressives across Europe and beyond, they are helping to chart a new path toward progress. As with the path fol-lowed by previous generations, we will move beyond conservatives on the left and right and beyond those populists stoking fear and spreading mistrust. As we do, we will move toward a more prosperous and happier future.

Let us walk that path together.


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CHALLENGES OF TODAY: Justin Trudeau 43

The Promise of ProgressJustin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

❛❛Real progress demands an inclusive economic vision designed to give all citizens a real and fair chance at success.

❜❜

Wilfrid Laurier, Canada’s seventh prime minister and the first francophone to lead the country, once said that “Canada is free, and freedom is its nationality.”

More than a century later, this wisdom endures. It endures because it articulates a simple truth: that our success as individuals, and our success as a nation, cannot be separated from our liberty and our willingness to defend it.

In Canada, the defense of liberty has a unique expression. It’s not about freedom from social responsibility or permission to act in one’s exclusive self-interest. Rather, it’s about a deliberate and enduring commitment to build a progressive society, one where indi-vidual liberty and collective identity both thrive and mutually reinforce one another.

We haven’t always gotten it right. We’re a young country, and we’re still learning. But the steady pace of Canada’s progress offers some reassurance.

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❛❛Progressive leaders need to promise greater openness and transparency, and they need to deliver on that promise.

❜❜

While critics argued that to do so would compromise our traditional values or somehow dilute what it means to be Canadian, successive generations of Canadians stood fast and fought to expand liberty to those who had been denied it. These efforts to gain greater freedom for our fellow citizens didn’t undermine Canadian values, they defined them.

In that sense, Canada is—and I hope will forever be—a shining example of the pro-gressive spirit. But those of us who seek to build a better future for ourselves and for our children and grandchildren also understand that there’s a limit to how far vision and values will get you. Progressive ideals mean little without a practical and pragmatic plan for real change.

Taking our cue from Canadians, our party offered such a plan and was rewarded with a majority mandate. Some dismissed that success, saying it was simply the result of an electorate that was clamoring for change. But those who paid attention would have noticed that Canadians weren’t just seeking a different government. They wanted a better government.



Canada’s election offers an important point of instruction for the global progressive movement. It proved that real change demands real choices—not the kind dictated by polls and pundits but tough decisions informed by shared values and made by leaders who trust and respect the citizens they seek to serve.

Using Canada’s experience as an example, four things stand out as essential to the future success of progressive politics.

First, real progress demands an inclusive economic vision designed to give all citizens a real and fair chance at success. In the past century, it was Canada’s growing and opti-mistic middle class that built a better country, not just for themselves but also for their children and for each other.

That success can—and should—be encouraged. It’s why we made a middle-class tax cut a central part of our platform and our number one priority after forming govern-ment. At the same time, we introduced a new tax bracket that asked Canada’s wealthi-est 1 percent to pay a bit more. By giving less to those who don’t need help, we will be able to give more to those who do. It’s the fair thing to do and the smart thing to do for Canada’s economy.

Second, progressive leaders need to promise greater openness and transparency, and they need to deliver on that promise. Citizens now have access to more information than at any point in history and are right to expect the same from their public institutions. Governments have a choice to make: They can either set a higher bar for openness and transparency or have voters reset it for them at the next election.

In Canada, this means committing to electoral reform. It means bringing an end to par-tisanship in our Senate. It means listening—truly listening—to citizens and seeking out ways to make their participation in our democracy more meaningful. For me personally, it means avoiding the temptation to become cynical and recommitting myself each day to staying hopeful and vigilant when it comes to democracy. Yes, democracy can be messy. But it doesn’t exist to make leaders look good. It exists to do good for the people.

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Third, progressive voices around the world must do more to encourage innovation—not as an end goal but as a means to extend the ladder of opportunity to more people. Earlier industrial revolutions created the middle class, now the base of the world’s most resilient economies. A similar opportunity exists today.

It’s not hard to see how the connections between computing, information, robotics, and biotechnologies could deliver spectacular progress. It’s also not hard to imagine how it could produce mass unemployment and greater inequality. Technology itself will not determine the future we get. Our choices will. Leadership will.

Progressive leadership should be focused on policies that create growth and on ensuring that growth produces tangible results for everyone. Progressive leadership creates a virtu-ous cycle. The more results we achieve for people—the more we grow the middle class and the more opportunities we create for those working hard to join the middle class—the more our citizens will grant license for further ambitious leadership.

Finally, no progressive movement can succeed if it doesn’t embrace the fundamental truth that diversity is strength. Canadians know this. Canadians live this truth every day. So to do citizens of many other countries, despite the ongoing efforts of some to make people more afraid, more anxious, and more suspicious of the unfamiliar.

Fear, once stoked, whether by populist media or by an aspiring politician with a dog whistle, is a dangerous thing. There is no way to predict where it will end. But at the same time, there is cause for hope. In the world, as in Canada, people are more often kind than they are cruel. They are generous, open-minded, and optimistic. And it is to those instincts that we must make our appeal, respecting our differences but remaining always mindful of the things we have in common and the common good that we can build when we work together.

❛❛No progressive movement can succeed if it doesn’t embrace the fundamental truth that diversity is strength.

❜❜


None of these four things—an inclusive economy, greater openness and transparency, a focus on sustainable and shared growth, and a commitment to diversity—will happen by accident nor will they succeed with continued effort. I’m confident that Canada will respond in ways that will do us and the world proud: with honesty and humility, with consideration and care. It is who we are and what we do.

Canadians know, instinctively, that our country is strong and prosperous not in spite of our differences but because of them. We know that a more inclusive and more generous approach enriches not only our society, but our economy as well. And we recognize, as Laurier did, that no matter how much progress has been made, we must always strive to do better.

That is Canada’s challenge, and it is our promise to you.

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CHALLENGES OF TODAY: Lodewijk Asscher 49

Decent Jobs and New PatriotismLodewijk Asscher, Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands

❛❛Too often, people chose to ignore problems, and lack of aspiration is sold as realism.

❜❜

Twelve years ago, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was brutally murdered by a home-grown terrorist. The killer was a young man of Moroccan descent who was raised and schooled in Amsterdam. I was a fresh city councilor at that time, and I can still vividly remember the sense of disbelief and anger that seized the city.

In an attempt to understand the world and circumstances in which the killer grew up, Dutch journalist Margalith Kleijwegt wrote Invisible Parents, a book about a class of youngsters in a so-called black high school in his neighborhood. She described the powerlessness of the parents and the chaos at the school. Those in front of the class were forced to act like police officers rather than teachers, and some children did not show up in class for months on end without the school taking any real action to resolve this absen-teeism. She talked to parents who had no clue about the world in which their children were living. Some of them did not even know where the school was located.

Even though this all took place just a few miles from the city center of Amsterdam, most people chose to ignore the problem. Cynics said that bad schools come with big cities.

50 GLOBAL PROGRESS

They told me that it couldn’t be fixed, so we shouldn’t try. Lack of aspiration was sold as realism.

Many fellow progressives had given up as well. Instead of expecting better results, they were just explaining the bad ones. But when children seem to be given up on even before they’ve had a fair chance, it should be our instinct to team up and fight to improve this school and others like it. After all, our raison d’être is fighting injustice.

We have always done so. In the past century, we fought the societal divide between the haves and the have-nots, the privileged and the nonprivileged, those who could vote and those who couldn’t. We built a middle-class society based on the values of solidarity, emancipation, and equal opportunity for all—an accomplishment we should never take for granted because there are always new injustices and battles to fight, especially when you see that so many people fear the future right now.

Today, values that we held for granted are again tested by the threat of radical Islamic terrorism carried out by home-grown terrorists. The enormous challenge of managing the huge flow of refugees from the conflicts in the Middle East adds to the discomfort of ordinary Europeans.

At the same time, they feel threatened by migrant workers who are willing to work for less, by highly educated people working below their level, and by technology making jobs obsolete. They experience that the pathways to a better life are barricaded one by one.

Our society faces the danger of becoming one of my youngest son’s favorite gifts brought home from school: a tadpole figure drawing of a person whose arms and legs are growing straight out of his head. As a child’s drawing, it is an endearing picture, but as a represen-tation of society, it is quite the opposite. The picture embodies a society from which the core, a strong middle class that typically binds the upper and lower echelons, has disap-peared. Unfortunately, the tadpole society is becoming increasingly more realistic.

Some of us blame the Third Way for all that has gone wrong. In their search for economic growth, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. President Bill Clinton, and Dutch Prime

❛❛Progressives need to develop a new sense of national pride by building a society based on solidarity.

❜❜


Minister Wim Kok supposedly lost sight of our common values. I don’t know if this is true, and in all honesty, I don’t care for a final verdict on the rights and wrongs of the Third Way. However, I do care about where the Third Way was supposed to be leading: social justice in a market economy.

That aspiration will never be reached if we hark back either to past solutions or impotent rhetoric. Let’s not become defenders of the status quo and apologists for modern injustice.

Instead, let’s formulate a shared agenda of radical change. We need to embrace our old goals and start working on our future by reclaiming the movement for the middle class. We need to fight today’s new inequalities.

First of all, we need to fight for fair and decent work. The road to prosperity should not be paved with disposable work. After all, disposable work creates disposable people. We must fight the conviction that in order to win the global race, people have to lose. In Europe, we see that the free movement of workers can lead to a free fall of labor condi-tions. In order to prevent the value of work being bartered away in the marketplace, we need to guarantee equal pay for equal work.

Second, we must fight against the new inequalities in life chances and security, such as the insecurity of people who got stuck in low-paid, flexible jobs who are not able to rent a house, let alone buy one. There is an inequality in perspective between kids who go to good schools and kids who have no such luck. In education, we can’t afford some to be more equal than others. Opportunity is not a self-managing unit, a guaranteed fait accompli. We need to invest in high-standard education and schooling for everyone.

Third, we have to decrease inequalities in income and wealth. Income from work as a per-centage of total wealth continues to fall in comparison to income from capital.1 Current global wealth statistics are mind-boggling. The world’s richest 62 people now have more wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion combined.2 Equal opportunity involves a political choice regarding the redistribution of wealth. We need to make the employment of low-skilled workers cheaper, prevent tax evasion by multinationals, and reinject the profits of these big companies back into society.

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Fourth, we need to stimulate a new, sustainable economy that provides the middle class with 21st-century jobs. So we have to embrace innovation but on our terms by investing in future-proof education, creativity, and our workforce. We have to aim at real labor mar-ket reform by making a radical decision for higher productivity rather than cheaper labor. We should opt for work security rather than job security. The right to training should be a fundamental right for all workers.

Fifth, we also have to tackle growing alienation and the increased feelings of uneasiness. Progressives need to develop a new sense of national pride, not by raising the white flag to the populists and the hatemongers, not by ignoring or wishing away real problems, but by building a society based on solidarity in which people are seen as individuals instead of members of their group and someone’s background remains just a background.

This means that we have to teach immigrants our values and persuade them to foster our values. We need to show them that our society is based on the principle of give and take: You can only be part of society when you participate in it. Everyone should accept the basic premise that if you want to be accepted, you have to accept others.

Furthermore, we have to empower our children so they can resist the sick ideologies of extremists. We need to educate them and support them in their long and hard struggle to make their own choices.

Finally, in this society based on solidarity, there is no room for discrimination that wastes talent and destroys dreams. We need to accelerate and increase our fight against discrimi-nation, for example by refusing—as a government—to do business with companies that have discriminated against minorities, women, or older workers.

Is social change of this magnitude even conceivable in this day and age? We know it will not be easy and it will not go as fast as we would like. But we are making progress, and I believe we have time on our side. Internationally, the indignation about inequal-ity is growing. Even the International Monetary Fund is now advocating redistribution of income.3 In the United States, there is a lively discussion about raising the federal minimum wage. Moreover, the minimum wage introduced by the Grosse Koalition in

❛❛The road to prosperity should not be paved with disposable work. After all, disposable work creates disposable people.

❜❜


Germany has given many people a decent income without being the brake on economic growth so firmly predicted by neoliberals and economists.4

And there is more that gives us hope. A couple of months ago, I went back to that same school in Amsterdam to attend the festive opening of their new building. The room was filled with people who had become closely involved with the school. It made me proud when I realized that there were an overwhelming number of progressives among them, both with and without party membership. Over the years, they had formed a collective force of change for good. People who had both the fury and the impatience, both the indignation and the stamina to make a difference. It is easy to get fired up by indignation over injustice, but it is hard to have the stamina to make a real difference.

These people showed that stamina. They all contributed in their own way to bring about change because they simply could not look away and give up on these kids. They did not do so because it was written in the party manifestos or even because it was their job. No, they did so because of what is in our progressive DNA: sharing responsibility, challenging the status quo, reaching for the impossible, and keeping up the fight.

In that classroom in one of the most troubled neighborhoods of Amsterdam, the audacity of hope was almost palpable. We have a job to do.

Endnotes 1 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development,

“Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising” (2011), available at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-mi-gration-health/the-causes-of-growing-inequalities-in-oecd-countries_9789264119536-en.

2 Oxfam International, “An Economy For the 1%” (2016), avail-able at https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/economy-1.

3 Aditya Tejas, “IMF Study Says Inequality Is Hurting Growth, Calls For Wealth Redistribution,” International Business Times, June 16, 2015, available at http://www.ibtimes.com/imf-study-says-inequality-hurting-growth-calls-wealth-redis-tribution-1968563.

4 Joris Kooiman, “Gevreesd effect Duits minimumloon blijft voorlopig uit,” Het Financieele Dagblad, January 5, 2016, avail-able at http://fd.nl/economie-politiek/1133973/gevreesd-effect-minimumloon-in-duitsland-blijft-voorlopig-uit.

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/the-causes-of-growing-inequalities-in-oecd-countries_9789264119536-en



https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/economy-1

http://www.ibtimes.com/imf-study-says-inequality-hurting-growth-calls-wealth-redistribution-1968563



http://fd.nl/economie-politiek/1133973/gevreesd-effect-minimumloon-in-duitsland-blijft-voorlopig-uit

http://fd.nl/economie-politiek/1133973/gevreesd-effect-minimumloon-in-duitsland-blijft-voorlopig-uit

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CHALLENGES OF TODAY: Sigmar Gabriel 55

Writing the Future of GermanyProgressive Politics in Turbulent TimesSigmar Gabriel, Vice Chancellor of Germany

❛❛Social democrats must avoid surrendering the center of our society to fear.

❜❜

Europe has reached a turning point in history. 2015 marks the end of a European era that began with an entire continent embarking on a new age of progress. Twenty-five peaceful years since the fall of the Berlin Wall had raised everyone’s hopes, and the future of Europe seemed to promise democracy, prosperity, security, and stability. Now, these hopes have been replaced by uncertainty. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” with the anticipated triumph of liberal Western-style democracy, its normative consensus, and its market-oriented economy has not come about.

Instead of a world of peace and progress, we are experiencing a world of uncertainty and insecurity: The Ukraine crisis has brought war back to Europe. The Greece debt crisis brought the eurozone to the brink of failure. The nihilist murderers of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, are exporting their terror to Europe—a continent that at the same time appears incapable of finding a common response to millions of refugees seek-ing protection and a new home in Europe. What’s more, although a unified Europe was blessed with many years of growing prosperity after the founding treaties of the European

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❛❛A strong diverse society requires strong institutions that generate trust, promote the common good, and enforce the rules.

❜❜

Union were signed, the Europe of today is economically and politically instable and increasingly perceived as a source of incalculable risks.

On the other hand, authoritarian states and nongovernment players nowadays seem able to achieve their goals more easily than the democratic states of Europe and their histori-cally unique project of European integration. Whereas liberal-capitalistic democracy gained the upper hand in the conflict of systems merely 25 years ago, the Western system currently sees itself confronted with an unprecedented loss of confidence. In almost all European democracies, voter turnout is dwindling inexorably.

At the same time, we are experiencing the rise of radical elements on the political fringes: Hungary is governed by a right-wing administration, right-wing nationalists have won the elections in Poland, and in Sweden, surveys have shown the populist right-wing Sweden Democrats party to be in the lead. In Great Britain, the U.K. Independence Party is putting the British government under pressure with its middle-class bearing and aggressive policies. In France, the campaign slogan of the Front National is “nationalist and social,” and with 28 percent of the vote, it was the strongest party in the first round of regional elections.1

In Germany, too, there is a clear manifestation of mistrust and, more and more frequently, of open rejection of the system to which the Social Democratic Party, or SPD, belongs as an established party. The political center is coming under increasing pressure.

At this turning point, German and European social democrats are fighting a critical battle for the political center. In the course of this, they are fighting against contempt for the system, nationalism, marginalization, isolation, intolerance, and racism. They are fighting for a free and open Europe, for cooperation and reconciliation, for plural-ism and commitment to society.

Up to now, established political parties—including the SPD—have responded to the increase in right-wing populists and right-wing radicals by ostracizing them. Indeed, when right-wing forces start to publicly stir up hatred and do not shy from digital tirades that include open threats of murder and when society is experiencing politically moti-vated acts of violence, strong, defensive democracies must enforce the rule of law.


However, we cannot confine ourselves to this measure alone. Even an effective, capable constitutional state is not able to fulfill the task of compensating a massive loss in politi-cal confidence. As democrats, especially as social democrats, we cannot simply reject or dismiss those sections of the population that no longer feel adequately represented. On the contrary, we should address the reasons for this growing alienation.

The determined prosecution of criminals must therefore be supplemented by a dia-logue offensive and by political offers from the SPD to those who are not right-wing radicals but have nevertheless started to shun democracy and have not been able to relate to the dialogues of the political and economic elite and media reports for some time. There is a risk that these people will turn their backs on democracy permanently and drift into a dismal parallel society and an obscure digital shadow world of disin-formation, conspiracy theories, and resentment from which the path to radicalism and extremism is often frighteningly short.

We must rebuild confidence in an efficient democracy that is able to ensure the freedom, safety, and prosperity of its citizens; that offers individual opportunities and protection to a solidarity-based society; and that is not only aware of the realities of everyday life, but also is prepared to talk about and find effective solutions for its problems. In a lot of instances, confidence in our country has been shaken. Nowadays, the frustration of efforts to climb the social ladder and fears of falling down it clash more strongly and jeopardize social cohesion in Germany. Even though Germany, on the whole, is excellently positioned in terms of economic growth and employment and most people in this country are doing well economically, the fear of social exclusion can often be depressingly real.

Under these circumstances, the current refugee situation acts as a catalyst in our society: It escalates the loss of confidence in our democratic system, its control competence, and its ability to solve problems. At the same time, it adds to the fear of social exclusion in view of new, perceived competition on the job and housing markets. Last but not least, fears of being swamped by foreigners are growing in view of so many new neighbors arriving from largely unfamiliar cultures. Here, social cohesion threatens to disintegrate, and the center of society is in danger of being marginalized.

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Social democrats must avoid surrendering the center of our society to fear without putting up a fight. It is, indeed, their duty to restrengthen the roots of social democracy in the main-stream, to take a closer look at the population’s everyday interests, and to treat the feeling of insecurity not with disdain but with compassion in the same way that former German Chancellor Willy Brandt did. The SPD must not be afraid to commit itself to the working middle of society in its programmatic debates.

At the same time, the SPD must underpin this attitude with wide-scale social policies designed to achieve double integration—the integration of newcomers into existing society and reintegration of those already living in Germany who threaten to move away from the center of our society.

In order to achieve this goal, we must continue to develop and enhance the institutions of our social and democratic constitutional state and its normative foundations. This includes investing in families, education, urban development, the labor market, and equal opportunities for all, as well as investing in public institutions that ensure social and inner security. Both are core competencies of the SPD. We need, therefore, economic policies that continue to support innovation and investment and provide the required framework conditions in the form of modern infrastructure. Economic success is essential in order to create the financial foundations for a formative social policy.

In order to meet coming challenges, we need a state that is in a position to take action, that commands respect, and that visibly solves problems. A strongly diversified society requires strong institutions that generate trust, promote the common good, and enforce the rules it has set down. At the same time, it also needs a sound set of fundamental val-ues based on the first 20 articles of the Basic Law and that clearly and offensively defend the principles of coexistence for all people living in Germany.

Germany is standing at the crossroads. We must now decide what kind of a country and what kind of a society we want to live in: Do we want to be a country of timid people isolated

❛❛We must rebuild confidence in an efficient democracy able to ensure the freedom, safety, and prosperity of its citizens.

❜❜


inside their own borders and imprisoned by their own fears, a country that defends its vested interests and takes no risks? This would be a divided country with traditional struc-tures that doesn’t know what it wants to achieve and only knows what it wants to avoid.

Or should we opt for a confident and optimistic country that believes in itself and sees the future not as a threat but as a promise? This would be a country that has confidence in its own strength and the opportunities it can offer and is prepared to tread new ground to make a new start. What is more important to the SPD than ever before is that we must take people’s worries seriously, help them overcome their fears, and build up confidence and trust.

Election successes are not the political reward for past achievements; they demonstrate the voters’ trust and confidence in political concepts for the future. For this reason, our perspec-tive for Germany in 2025 must follow the guiding principle of safe living in an open society as a proud reformist party that courageously and hopefully places its cards on a better future and does not pit the concepts of security and modernization against each other.

We shall not be able to achieve one without the other. We cannot achieve security unless we open up outwardly, unless we maintain international partners, global networks, and willingness to innovate. Nor can we live safely if we do not open up our society inwardly toward greater equality of opportunities, as well as fair pay and benefits; if we do not remove barriers to participation and upward mobility; and if we do not reduce discrimi-nation on account of origin, age, gender, family form, or sexual orientation.

This compass will guide us when working on our programs in the next few years and in 2017, and it will lead to an SPD government program showing a clear social democratic alternative for the future of our society. This program shall renew the social democratic promise.

Endnotes1 French Interior Ministry, ”Résultats des élections régionales 2015,” available at http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/

Regionales/elecresult__regionales-2015/%28path%29/regionales-2015/FE.html (last accessed February 2016).

http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Regionales/elecresult__regionales-2015/%28path%29/regionales-2015/FE.html

http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Elections/Les-resultats/Regionales/elecresult__regionales-2015/%28path%29/regionales-2015/FE.html


FUTURE OF GLOBAL PROGRESS 61

The values that underpin the progressive vision are eternal; however, the means through which that vision is achieved will change and evolve over time. In this closing section, aspiring leaders from Europe and Australasia reflect on the successes of previous eras of progressive governance and discuss how that can inform the challenges they will face in the future. They argue that progressive leaders are uniquely well placed to address tomorrow’s problems as both progressive values and policy evidence support the case for greater solidarity and opportunity. ››

FUTURE OF GLOBAL PROGRESS

62 GLOBAL PROGRESS

FUTURE OF GLOBAL PROGRESS: Andrew Little 63

Global Challenges, Progressive SolutionsAndrew Little, Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party

❛❛It’s the global progressive movement that plays early host to tomorrow’s dominant ideas.

❜❜

A few years ago, a Labour government in New Zealand introduced a series of payments to families on modest incomes. The payments increased with the number of children in the family. The policy was based on the radical ideas that kids need food and clothing to learn and thrive; it’s not a child’s fault if she is born into a family of modest means; and the entire community benefits when its young are doing well.

The disgust among our opponents was visceral. They railed against the payments. One of their members of parliament, now New Zealand’s prime minister, derided the policy as “communism by stealth.”1

Now New Zealand has a conservative government in its third term, but the payments haven’t been touched. Families are still receiving the money, more of it if they have more dependent children. Yet again a major social initiative, introduced by a progressive gov-ernment against a tirade of conservative abuse, has become part of the political furniture. Untouchable. Sacrosanct.

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For progressives, that’s what victory looks like. Even when we’re out of office, our ideas remain dominant, our policies in force. Our influence on the future far outlasts our ministerial warrants.

As progressives and social democrats, we are the guardians of the future. From Britain’s National Health

Service and America’s Voting Rights Act to almost every policy advance on tolerance, inclusion, social services, education, and environmental responsibility, it’s the global progressive movement that plays early host to tomorrow’s dominant ideas. For the best part of a century, we have been where the world’s visionary political thinking happens.

In this early part of the 21st century, the world needs progressive social democracy more than ever, as governments around the world meet three core challenges: automation at work, inequality, and climate change.

This current age is one of huge potential opportunity—and a serious challenge—based around rapid changes in technology. Robotics and algorithms are revolution-izing the workplace at an ever increasing pace. The change goes far beyond assembly lines and factories. Five years ago, the world had taxi dispatchers. Now, we have Uber. Accountants are being replaced by Xero. Law clerks are giving way to optical character recognition and searches.

This is, of course, the latest step in an ongoing process. The manual telephone exchanges of the 1960s have largely gone, as have the typing pools of the 1970s and the record stores of the 1980s and 1990s. But in the 21st century, the pace of change is becoming more rapid.

The opportunity in this upheaval is clear. With the coming of what Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee call the Second Machine Age, humans are being increasingly freed from mundane, process-driven work. By freeing people from that burden, we can unleash their creativity in more rewarding, interesting work, as long as they’re in a position to take advantage of it.

❛❛The challenge for progressives is to help the people whose former careers are ended by technological change.

❜❜


Therein lies the challenge. Unfettered technological change creates losers as well as win-ners, and we must ensure human progress ultimately benefits every human.

In New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland, the port is planning to introduce automated, driverless straddle carriers to take containers from ship to truck and from truck to ship. Millions of New Zealanders will win—if only a little—as a result through decreased transportation costs for their wares. More competitive exports will leave our shores; cheaper consumer goods will flow the other way.

But the former straddle drivers will lose a lot. They’ll lose their jobs and their livelihoods. The challenge for progressives is to help the people whose former careers are ended by technological change. They aren’t to blame for changing technology and shouldn’t have to suffer as all around them benefit.

We need to encourage sunrise industries, help those industries take on displaced workers, and help workers retrain. That requires an integrated set of policies incentivizing inno-vation and making retraining accessible to people midcareer. It’s industry policy, labor market policy, and education policy, all coordinated to ensure that technological advance leads to pareto-improving human advance.

This, the future of work, is one of the biggest policy issues our movement must address, not least because it links to another of the critical challenges facing advanced nations—inequality. Robotization and more-efficient task processing will almost certainly increase the stock of human welfare, as people will have more time for rewarding careers and more time with their loved ones. The big unknown is how those gains will be distributed across the community.

Since the 1970s, productivity has continued to improve dramatically while real wages for workers have not. Almost all the gains from productivity have gone to the owners of capi-tal, not the owners of labor. With that background, it’s no surprise that within-country inequality rose in more than three-quarters of advanced nations over that same period.2

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❛❛The world needs progressive leadership more than ever if we’re to truly address climate change.

❜❜

If that trend of deeply skewed financial gains continues as we enter the Second Machine Age, the result will be a further spike in inequality. The rich will get much, much richer, while the rest stay still. Inequality, as we know, leads in turn to wasted human potential and decreased social cohesion.

Increased inequality is a blight on our societies, and it will inevitably fall to progressives to lead the charge against it, as the conservative record on fighting inequality is as pitiful as it is halfhearted. Sometimes that fight takes the form of redistribution, but at other times, we can reduce inequality by addressing its causes. If displaced workers are given opportunities to retrain for new careers in growth industries, they’re less likely to need the welfare safety net and less likely to contribute to the inequality problem. That way, adapting to the future of work also insures against inequality.

The third historic challenge we face is climate change. That’s an area where social demo-crats have had to learn over time from our friends in the environmental movement. It’s also another area where conservatives lag behind. Climate change is an existential chal-lenge for us all, one that will force every country to make difficult, costly decisions.

With last year’s agreement in Paris, we can now finally boast a truly global commitment to address climate change. Despite the great progress at Paris, the framework to which we agreed can only ever provide leaders with information. It is still up to us to make the tough choices. That’s an area where progressives shine because, unlike conservatives, we have the ability to be bold where boldness is required, and we have the ability to make big changes in a humane way. The world needs progressive leadership more than ever if we’re to truly address climate change.

Of course, without electoral victory, it’s impossible to implement our ideas in the first place, and that presents cyclical challenges. Public tastes about this argument or that policy change with the years, and that means progressives need to constantly adapt their plans and campaigns to suit the democratic mood.


But one thing that never alters is the public demand for forward thinking about the great challenges facing people and the world. Early in this century, the world looks to social democrats to meet the great challenges of our age. We’ll shape a generational opportunity as technology eases the burden of work. We’ll fight an historic scourge as we make sure economic gains are shared fairly by owners and workers. And we’ll meet a shared mortal challenge as we prepare the world to address climate change. The public looks to us to lead these efforts because they know our capacity for bold and innovative policy is unmatched.

Endnotes 1 New Zealand Parliament, “Supplementary Estimates—Im-

prest Supply Debate,” June 22, 2004, available at http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/debates/debates/47HansD_20040622_00000898/supplementary-estimates-—-im-prest-supply-debate.

2 Luxembourg Income Study, “Inequality & Poverty” (2016), available at http://www.lisdatacenter.org/data-access/key-figures/inequality-and-poverty/; New Zealand Ministry of Social Development, “Household Incomes in New Zealand” (2014), available at https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/monitoring/house-hold-incomes/.

http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/debates/debates/47HansD_20040622_00000898/supplementary-estimates-—-imprest-supply-debate




http://www.lisdatacenter.org/data-access/key-figures/inequality-and-poverty/

http://www.lisdatacenter.org/data-access/key-figures/inequality-and-poverty/

https://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/publications-resources/monitoring/household-incomes/



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FUTURE OF GLOBAL PROGRESS: Bill Shorten 69

Progressive FuturesBill Shorten, Leader of the Australian Labor Party

❛❛Productivity and innovation must be harnessed to drive broad-based, inclusive growth for the many.

❜❜

For all of us, the true reward of politics is progress. Our parties and movements are motivated by neither the trappings of office nor the appearance of power, but the meaningful good that principled, energetic reforming governments can deliver.

Our mission is both enduring and evolving. As agents of change, we reject complacency. We are ever alert to the danger of entrenching disadvantage with a mere defense of the status quo. Yet at the same time, we accept and embrace responsibility for ensuring that the forces of change work for our citizens, not against them. We feel, acutely, a moral duty to ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are not left behind by advancing technologies and evolving economies.

The means and methods by which we once sought to deliver social democracy have altered, but our foundational principles are unmoved. A century ago, we spoke primarily of the fair distribution of wealth; today, we embrace responsibility for its creation. We reject the false choice between a strong economy and a fair society because we under-stand that each is the precondition for the other.

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❛❛Demonstrating the value of participation in politics requires us to continually renew and reform our parties’ structures to harness community ideas.

❜❜Understanding and advocating this partnership between economic advancement and social justice is essential for the success of modern progressive parties.

Our vision is for an economy and a society that rewards citizens for their ideas, encour-ages participation, and values the contribution individuals make to their communities. In the modern progressive economy, small business is supported and celebrated as the cata-lyst for national success and productivity and innovation are harnessed to drive broad-based, inclusive growth for the many, not trickle-down wealth for the few.

The aftermath of the global financial crisis has been witness to a growing legion of leaders from politics, private enterprise, academia, and the public sector recasting the relation-ship between growth and fairness.

The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Bank of England, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, organized labor, and the Vatican are all sending the same message: Inclusion drives growth.

This emerging global consensus offers us all a new opportunity. Cooperating and sharing ideas in global forums such as these helps us develop the best possible policy solutions. There is much we can learn from each other—and from our histories—as so many of the opportunities and obstacles we must navigate are international and universal.

The single most important foundation stone of our progress must be our integrity and our respect for democracy. Our parties must always uphold our covenant of trust with the people we represent. Earning and repaying the trust of our citizens is essential to building the community consensus upon which enduring reform depends, and it helps maintain


a broader faith in the democratic process, in the value of the political system, and in its ability to deliver meaningful, beneficial change.

Demonstrating the value of participation in politics requires us to continually renew and reform our parties’ structures to harness community ideas. An emphasis on local knowl-edge shows an understanding of both our regions and our cities and helps us present the best possible candidates, especially women, as we support their onward march through the institutions of power.

The party I lead, the Australian Labor Party, has always believed in what Australians call the “fair go.” A century ago, a fair go meant working with employers and employees to guarantee a decent day’s wage for a day’s work and basic workplace protections.

The fair go is also an economic reform, not just a social good. Decent pay and conditions help create more productive and more profitable enterprises, empowering consumers and growing our national wealth.

In the same way, affordable and accessible higher education helps deliver a smarter and more innovative nation—a Labor Party commitment to fairness that boosts our econ-omy by improving the skills, knowledge, and flexibility of our workforce and equipping our people to adapt to economic change.

The same is true of health care. Forty years ago, the number-one cause of per-sonal bankruptcy in Australia was medical expenses. For hundreds of thousands of Australians, sudden illness or injury meant poverty. The Labor Party built Medicare—a system of universal health care and a source of international competitive advantage. Medicare keeps our people healthy and productive at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer and at no cost to employers.

Thirty years ago, millions of Australians retired with nothing in the bank but their last paycheck. Too many of our people were working hard all their lives only to retire poor, relying solely on modest government fixed income to get by.

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❛❛The means by which we once sought to deliver social democracy have altered, but our founding principles are unmoved.

❜❜

The Labor Party, working with business and the union movement, created universal superannuation: a national savings pool that permanently relieves demand on pensions and other government support. Superannuation is a savings system that puts Australians in control of their retirement, guaranteeing them the dignity and security that they have most certainly earned.

A little more than seven years ago, I was sworn in as the parliamentary secretary for disabilities, and my eyes were opened to a whole new world of unfairness and neglect. Hundreds of thousands of Australians with disabilities were exiled to a second-class life in their own country, their elderly parents wracked by the sleepless midnight anxiety of worrying who would look after their child when they were gone.

The Labor Party created the National Disability Insurance Scheme, or NDIS—a sys-tem of tailored support and targeted resources that empowers Australians to fulfill their potential and plan their own futures. The NDIS is a reform that will boost job oppor-tunities for Australians with disabilities and give their remarkable careers the chance to re-engage with the employment market.

For me, these reforms represent a political GPS for navigating the new challenges of the 21st century. They are indeed mighty challenges: two generations of retirees alive at the same time, a changing climate, a global market, and a borderless world.

There are also the sometimes-forgotten social problems of our time: a sense of isolation, loneliness, and a loss of community. For all the diverse new ways of communicating, growing numbers of people feel that help and friendship are beyond their grasp—we have to reach out to them.

No one nation, no leader has all the answers to these defining questions. But important forums such as the Center for American Progress’ Global Progress initiative allow us to share the ideas upon which we will build the solutions. Together, I believe we can make change work for everyone who depends upon the politics of progress.


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FUTURE OF GLOBAL PROGRESS: Jonas Gahr Støre 75

Values and Facts Are on Our Side!Jonas Gahr Støre, Leader of the Norwegian Labour Party

❛❛In order to build trust in government, political leaders must show that they are worthy of that trust.

❜❜

The test of progressive politics is our ability to develop and support policies that promote fairness and equity. There are two dimensions to this: one linked to our values, the other linked to external facts. On the one hand, our values help define the good society. On the other hand, research and evidence provide a guide as to how to achieve it. Today, both values and facts are on our side: Fair and equitable societies are better placed to succeed in the knowledge-based economy.

The confluence of values and facts presents the possibility of a win-win scenario for the progressive movement. If we adapt, if we modernize, if we read the changes in the right way, then we can both promote the values that are the hallmark of our movement and cre-ate modern, effective, and caring societies.

These lessons mirror my reflections on the Nordic experience during 25 years in politi-cal and public life in Norway. During the early 1990s, we frequently heard that the so-called Nordic model was doomed; the state was too big, the unions too strong, the taxes too high, and the elites too few. Then, gradually, the message changed. These grim

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❛❛We can set democratic standards for how future growth should take place and ambitions of public infrastructure, as well as set out who foots the costs.

❜❜predictions did not stand up to reality. The Nordic countries passed the financial crises with higher employment, lower unemployment, sounder public finances, and higher productivity levels than most other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, countries.1

A key factor in this performance has been our relative success in pursuing policies that promote fairness and equity. We still have a long list of reforms and improvements that we need to make, but what matters here is the favorable comparison with other politi-cal models. Those who opted for sustained neoliberal policies—cutting back on public responsibility though privatization and commercialization, limiting the role of organized labor, and lowering taxes for the rich—ended up with growing inequality, limited trust, and reduced social capital. In short, they prepared themselves poorly for the constant need to adapt in the knowledge-based economy.

Johannes Jansson


The test of effective progressive policies has always been the ability to develop real-world answers to the real-world problems experienced by ordinary people. In the past, our movement was weakened when we proved unable to address the problems and short-comings linked to a weak economy, rising unemployment, and social tension. When we as a popular movement have been weak, then the road has been opened to more extreme forces, on the right and on the left.

We need a constant focus on the everyday test of our policies: Do they work? Have we been honest enough to challenge our old answers as new questions arise at home and globally? Today, we must help equip a new generation to face a changing economy and labor market and address the great global challenges ranging from global warming to universal human rights and disarmament, to mention but a few.

There are still lessons to learn from history. Historically, the labor movement and social democrats were at the forefront of a broad popular mobilization that shaped the social and economic transformation of Europe toward the modern welfare state in the 20th century.

We did this by reaching out. Active involvement of a great number of civil society organizations, in particular through our close partnership with organized labor, created a network—an organic everyday democracy—able to address and influence issues that affected people’s everyday lives. This strategy of involvement is neither an antique nor old-fashioned, but it does need to be re-energized and adapted to modern realities.

We should seize upon this approach, not only for the purpose of winning elections, but also in order to improve and modernize our own policies. We need a much more open and inclusive approach to people from all walks of life. As political parties, we may be good at writing election manifestos, but we need broad outreach in order to collect the knowledge it takes to fill them with substance that speaks to reality and meets society’s full potential. We need to engage existing party members, but we should dare to go fur-ther, listening actively to knowledge, research, and experience from a much more diverse group of citizens. In this way, we can also recruit more members to our movement. We

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must be open to change, listen to new ideas, and engage with new people—particularly the young.

The lingering economic hardship in Europe—with stagnation in wages, high unemploy-ment, and ever-greater disparities in income and wealth—has been accompanied by a political crisis.

We must provide better answers to the people who have lost their jobs or find themselves in difficult economic circumstances. On the road to real recovery, we must reject the notion that a low-wage strategy is the right answer. In most OECD countries, the gap between rich and poor has hit its highest level in 30 years.2 Researchers at the OECD now find that income inequality has a negative and statistically significant impact on subsequent growth and that policies that help limit or reverse the long-run rise in inequality would not only make societies less unfair, but also richer.3 Again, we are close to a win-win, policies that are fair and equitable are also likely to be effective.

This is a critical observation, supported by evidence from unexpected corners. The Global Agenda Councils of the World Economic Forum have put deepening income inequalities at the top of the list of all the great challenges that we face today. Again, values and facts meet when it comes to our commitment to fight inequality and promote inclusive societies. If we seize this historic opportunity, we can again provide real-world answers to real-world problems. We need reinforced redistribution policies via taxes and transfers, improved education, and job creation to ensure that the benefits of growth are more broadly distributed and to sustain long-term growth.

Our job is to build our nations for a better future. My home country, Norway, is now fac-ing population growth at record levels. More people are moving to our larger cities. How should we meet these changes? If met passively, market forces will deal with the arbitra-

❛❛The test of effective progressive policies has always been the ability to develop real-world answers to the real-world problems experienced by ordinary people.

❜❜


tion of interests. But we can set democratic standards for how future growth should take place, where houses will be built, and ambitions of public infrastructure, as well as set out who foots the costs.

At the same time, rising life expectancy entails population aging. This trend applies to most other industrialized nations as well and presents us with common challenges regarding sustainability of public finances and care for the elderly in a welfare system. These future prospects require us to maintain a relatively high level of taxation and a high level of labor force participation to bolster public revenues. Policies for promoting employment and higher productivity growth will be a central part of our strategy. The work effort of the population is the foundation of the welfare state.

Globalization ties the world ever more closely together, in both economic and human terms. Migration is rising; people are on the move. In particular, the conflicts ravaging the Middle East have affected Europe directly through a large flow of refugees seeking asylum. This will affect the demographic makeup and labor markets of several European countries in the years to come. Immigration must not forge increasing division in the labor market. In doing our share and showing solidarity, much effort must be put into making the path to employment as short as possible. Work, income, and taxation are key for both integration and a sustainable welfare state.

How can we motivate employees to stay in their jobs and increase productivity? Trust is an essential part of the answer to this and most other questions our societies face. We know that trust is highly important for the success of government policies that depend on cooperation, inclusion, and compliance of citizens. Unfortunately, trust in government is deteriorating in many countries. The OECD’s 2013 survey showed that only 4 out of 10 citizens in OECD countries have confidence in their national authorities, and not surpris-ingly, trust has declined most in the countries hit hardest by the global economic crisis.4

In order to build trust in government, political leaders must show that they are worthy of that trust—not only by example, but also by providing realistic solutions to real problems that people face. This can never be done by politicians alone. It is of critical importance that we support and encourage a strong and vigorous civil society, and it is critical that

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we foster trust and cooperation in the labor market. A conflict partnership between labor and capital is an investment that benefits all of society.

What does this imply? It means a continuous investment in regular cooperation between the social partners and government. Through trusted dialogue, we can also build consensus on other broad policy orientations, such as the principles for pension reform.

Finally, all our challenges, pressing as they may be, must be met within the limits set by the climate. We may be the first generation to see the large-scale effect of climate change, and we might be the last generation that can do something about it. As progressives, we should not see climate change as yet another issue, but rather a framework around all policies. Climate change and global warming is the starkest example of market failure. We have a tradition for dealing with market failure by helping correct what leads to failure.

Again, to me, the answer is rooted in fairness and equity. We are in this together. The knowledge of all and the effort of all must be mobilized. This is no quick fix. It is about setting our societies on a sustainable course by putting a true cost on carbon and other climate gases, and it is about offering incentives and investments that will produce new technologies and new knowledge. No other political movement should be better placed to lead this transformation. Here again, the values and the facts are on our side!

Endnotes 1 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-

ment, “Factbook Country Statistical Profiles – 2014 edition,” available at https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=FACTBOOK2014_PUB (last accessed February 2016).

2 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Income Inequality: The Gap between Rich and Poor” (2015), available at http://www.oecd.org/social/income-inequality-9789264246010-en.htm.

3 Federico Cingano, “Trends in Income Inequality.” Working Paper (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel-opment, 2014), available at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/trends-in-income-inequality-and-its-impact-on-economic-growth_5jxrjncwxv6j-en.

4 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Government at a Glance” (2013), available at http://www.oecd.org/gov/government-at-a-glance-2013.htm.

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=FACTBOOK2014_PUB

https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=FACTBOOK2014_PUB

http://www.oecd.org/social/income-inequality-9789264246010-en.htm

http://www.oecd.org/social/income-inequality-9789264246010-en.htm

http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/trends-in-income-inequality-and-its-impact-on-economic-growth_5jxrjncwxv6j-en



http://www.oecd.org/gov/government-at-a-glance-2013.htm

http://www.oecd.org/gov/government-at-a-glance-2013.htm


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About the Authors

Lodewijk AsscherAfter completing his studies, Lodewijk Asscher remained at the University of Amsterdam, working at the Institute for Information Law as a researcher from 1998 to 2006 and as a lecturer starting in 2002.

From 2002 to 2006, Asscher served on the Amsterdam City Council, representing the Labour Party, or PvdA. In 2006, he became a member of the municipal executive with responsibility for economic affairs, finance, educa-tion, civic integration, and youth. After the resignation of Mayor Job Cohen, he was interim mayor of Amsterdam from March to July 2010. From that period until his appointment as minister, he was a member of the munici-pal executive with responsibility for finance, youth, educa-tion, and Project 2012.

On November 5, 2012, Asscher was appointed deputy prime minister of the Netherlands and minister of social affairs and employment in the Rutte-Asscher government.

Tony Blair Tony Blair served as prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007. During his time in office, the United Kingdom enjoyed record growth and major improvements were made in public services, while he also trebled the United Kingdom’s aid to Africa and introduced the first program to combat climate change.

Since 2007, he has spent most of his time working on the Middle East, formerly as Middle East Quartet representative but now on building relations between Arabs and Israelis; in Africa, where—through the Africa

Governance Initiative—he is helping presidents to deliver change programs; and on combating extremism through the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

Matt Browne Matt Browne is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the executive director of Global Progress, an international network of think tanks and foundations established to share policy ideas and advance progressive ideals. Browne is a member of the global advisory board of Canada 2020, sits on the editorial board of Volta in Italy, and is a member of the governing board of Policy Network in the United Kingdom, where he also served as executive director from 2002 to 2006. He began his career as an adviser to former European Commission President Jacques Delors and has advised more than 30 progressive leaders across four continents.

President Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton was the first Democratic U.S. president in six decades to be elected twice—first in 1992 and then in 1996. Under his leadership, the United States enjoyed the strongest economy in a generation and the longest economic expansion in its history, including the creation of more than 22 million jobs.

After leaving the White House, President Clinton established the Clinton Foundation with the mission to improve global health, strengthen economies, promote health and wellness, and protect the environment.

In addition to his foundation work, President Clinton

About the Authors 83

has served as the top U.N. envoy for the Indian Ocean tsunami recovery effort and as the U.N. special envoy to Haiti. Today, the Clinton Foundation is supporting eco-nomic growth, capacity building, and education in Haiti.

President Clinton was born on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas. He and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, have one daughter, Chelsea, and live in Chappaqua, New York.

Sigmar Gabriel Sigmar Gabriel is the German federal minister for eco-nomic affairs and energy, federal vice chancellor, and has been chairman of the Social Democratic Party since November 2009. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1977, was a member of the Lower Saxony state parliament from 1990 to 2005, and served as min-ister-president of Lower Saxony from December 1999 to March 2003. He was elected to the Bundestag in 2005 and has remained a member ever since. He served as federal minister for the environment, nature conservation, and nuclear safety from November 2005 to October 2009.

Ricardo LagosRicardo Lagos was born on March 2, 1938. He is married and has five children and 10 grandchildren. After receiv-ing a law degree, he earned a Ph.D. in economics at Duke University and was president of Chile from 2000 to 2006.

During the 1980s, he led the Democratic Alliance and the Independent Committee for Free Elections. He was the founder and first president of the Party for the

Democracy. In the 1990s after democracy was recovered in Chile, Lagos was minister of education from 1990 to 1992 and minister of public works from 1994 to 1998.

He has received the honoris causa from a large num-ber of prestigious universities in the world, such as the Universidad Autónoma de México and the Universidad de Salamanca, among many others. He was also granted the Berkeley Medal, the top distinction of the University of California, Berkeley.

Additionally, Lagos was formerly the president of the Club de Madrid and a U.N. special envoy on climate change. He is also president of the Fundación Democracia y Desarrollo in Chile and was professor-at-large at Brown University in the United States for five years, among others.

Andrew LittleAndrew Little is leader of the Labour Party, the largest opposition party in the New Zealand Parliament. A lawyer by trade, he has been a member of parliament since 2011. Prior to his election, Little served as national secretary of the Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union, president of the Labour Party outside Parliament, and president of the national student movement. Through his work, Little discovered the need for government to be focused on both wealth creation and fair wealth distribu-tion. He believes a fair and just society should provide people opportunities to excel and to be fairly rewarded for their efforts. Little is married with one son.

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Constance J. MilsteinConstance Milstein is the principal and co-founder of Ogden CAP Properties LLC, where she oversees interna-tional real estate, hotel, and property development opera-tions. She also is dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences, and education, serving on the boards of multiple public and private institutions, and engaging in philanthropic activities as founder, chairman, and director of a number of charitable organizations.

Among these institutions and charitable organiza-tions, she serves as chairman of the French-American Cultural Foundation, which celebrates and maintains the ties between the United States and France; direc-tor on the board of the National Symphony Orchestra; director of Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.; trustee of the Washington National Opera; trustee at New York Presbyterian Hospital; director of Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, or CURE, a nonprofit organiza-tion dedicated to finding a cure for epilepsy; chair of The Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, which fights trafficking and enslavement of children; and director of Refugees International. She also sits on the governing boards of a number of educational institutions, includ-ing her alma mater, New York University, and the Seton Hall University School of Diplomacy. She has founded and co-founded a number of startups to address some of society’s most persistent problems, including Dog Tag Bakery, a unique social enterprise combining a vibrant business model with providing critical education and training for wounded veterans and their spouses; Medical Missions for Children; and others. For her philanthropic works, Milstein received the Albert Gallatin Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Society.

Milstein earned her undergraduate degree from New York University and her J.D. cum laude from North Carolina Central University Law School.

Tom PitfieldTom Pitfield is president of Canada 2020. Pitfield was a senior adviser and chief digital strategist for Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada in the 2015 election. He was a senior policy adviser to the leader of the government in the Canadian Senate, Jack Austin. He is one of the four founders of Canada 2020. Previously, he worked in China for the Canada China Business Council and as a business strategy consultant specializing in corporate governance for IBM Canada. After co-founding IBM’s Toronto Innovation Center, he worked as policy adviser to the director of IBM’s Business Partner Channel. Pitfield holds an honors degree in business from Queen’s University and a master’s degree with merit in political philosophy from the London School of Economics.

Matteo Renzi Matteo Renzi has been prime minister of Italy since February 22, 2014, when he was appointed as the new president of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic. He is the youngest in Italy’s history. At the fol-lowing European parliamentary elections in May 2014, the Democratic Party, or PD, obtained 40.8 percent of votes, the best result since the party was established and the largest amount of votes collected by a European party—more than 11 million.

Renzi was born in Florence in January 1975. At a very early age, he joined the Scout Movement and made his own the Scout motto of “leaving this world a little bet-


ter than you found it,” in Robert Baden-Powell’s words. During his university years, he became interested in politics, campaigning in support of Romano Prodi, who later became Italy’s prime minister and president of the European Commission. He combined studying with work in his family business. In 1999, he obtained a law degree from Florence University and, in the same year, got mar-ried to Agnese Landini.

In 2004, Renzi was elected president of the Florence Provincial Council. In 2008, he announced his intention to run for mayor of Florence. In June 2009, he was elected mayor. For the first time in Florence, an equal number of male and female councilors were appointed. From 2010 to 2012, his involvement in Italian national politics increased. In 2013, Renzi ran for the leadership of the PD, and on December 8, he was appointed secretary of the PD with 67.5 percent of preferences.

Bill ShortenBill Shorten has been federal member for Maribyrnong in the Australian Parliament since November 2007 and the leader of the Federal Labor Party since October 2013. Shorten joined the Labor Party during his last year of secondary schooling at age 17 and has devoted his entire adult life to serving the labor movement.

As a senior member of the Labor government, Shorten played a key role in establishing the National Disability Insurance Scheme to empower Australians with dis-abilities and increasing universal superannuation to 12 percent, ensuring that Australians do not work hard their whole lives only to retire poor. As Labor leader, Shorten has led the national policy debate on renewable energy, family violence, tax reform, education, and technology.

Together, Shorten and his wife Chloe have supported disability reform, science and medical research, and maternal and child health organizations. They live in his electorate of Maribyrnong with their three children and dogs Theodore and Matilda.

Jonas Gahr Støre Jonas Gahr Støre is the leader of the Norwegian Labour Party. He served as minister of foreign affairs from 2005 to 2012 and as minister of health and care services from 2012 to 2013. Støre studied political science at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. He worked for Gro Harlem Brundtland as her chief of staff at the prime minister’s office from 1989 to 1997. He has also been executive director at the World Health Organization and secretary general of the Norwegian Red Cross.

Neera TandenNeera Tanden is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress. Tanden has served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations, as well as presidential campaigns and think tanks. Most recently, Tanden served as the chief operating officer for the Center, where she oversaw strategic planning, operations, and fundraising.

Tanden previously served as senior adviser for health reform at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, working on President Barack Obama’s health reform team in the White House. Previously, Tanden was the director of domestic policy for the Obama-Biden presidential campaign and served as policy director for the 2008 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. She received her bachelor of science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her law degree from Yale Law School.

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Helle Thorning-Schmidt Helle Thorning-Schmidt was the leader of the Danish Social Democratic Party for 11 years and prime minister of Denmark from 2011 to 2015, leading a coalition gov-ernment for a full parliamentary term. As prime minister, Thorning-Schmidt’s principal domestic achievement was to lead Denmark out of the financial crisis by delivering a range of structural reforms, sustainable growth, balanced budgets, low unemployment, and improvement on key social conditions.

During Thorning-Schmidt’s term of office, Denmark’s international involvement increased. The country’s official development assistance was brought up to 0.83 percent of gross national income, and Thorning-Schmidt took a per-sonal interest in promoting education and fighting climate change worldwide.

Beginning April 4, 2016, Thorning-Schmidt will be the CEO of Save the Children International.

Justin Trudeau Justin Trudeau is Canada’s 23rd prime minister.

On October 19, 2015, Trudeau led the Liberal Party of Canada to victory, winning a majority government with seats in every province and territory across the country. He was elected on a platform for change and growing the middle class. He was government sworn in to office on November 4, 2015, with an equal number of men and women in Cabinet—a first in Canada’s history.

A teacher, father, advocate, and leader, Trudeau’s vision of Canada is a place where everyone has a shot at success because policymakers have the confidence and leadership to invest in Canadians.

Driven by the desire to have a positive influence in the

world after graduating from McGill University in 1994, Trudeau decided to become a schoolteacher. He com-pleted the University of British Columbia’s education program and spent several years teaching mostly French and math in Vancouver.

In 2002, Trudeau returned home to Montreal, where he fell in love with Sophie Grégoire, a Quebec TV and radio host. They married in 2005 and, in subsequent years, became the proud parents of Xavier, Ella-Grace, and Hadrien.

In 2007, Trudeau decided to serve Canadians by seek-ing the nomination in the Montreal riding of Papineau. He was elected in 2008 and then again in 2011 and 2015.

Trudeau was elected leader of his party in April 2013. Propelled by hope and hard work, he focused his leader-ship on building the team and the plan to create growth that works for the middle class and fair economic oppor-tunity for everyone; respect for and promotion of freedom and diversity; and a more democratic government that represents all of Canada.

Hamdi UlukayaHamdi Ulukaya launched Chobani Greek Yogurt in 2007, and five years later, the brand became the best-selling Greek yogurt in the United States with more than $1 bil-lion in annual sales. Chobani has been one of the fastest-growing companies in history, founded upon a vision that has effectively transformed an entire food category. Led by his passion to democratize better food for more people, Chobani gives 10 percent of its profits to support organi-zations with similar values.

In 2015, Ulukaya signed “The Giving Pledge” and com-mitted the majority of his personal wealth to help end to


the global refugee crisis. He also launched his personal foundation, Tent, to support this commitment. Tent is a vehicle to deliver critical support, partnership, policies, awareness, and urgently needed assistance to refugees and displaced people.

Ulukaya was named an eminent advocate by the U.N. Refugee Agency, or UNHCR, and is a member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship,

or PAGE. He received the 2013 Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Award and the Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneurial Success Award. Ulukaya sits on the boards of the American-Turkish Council, The American Turkish Society, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Pathfinder Village for Down syndrome. He is also vice chair of the Kennedy Center Corporate Fund Board in Washington, D.C.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESSThe Center for American Progress is an independent, nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Our aim is not just to change the conversation, but to change the country.

ABOUT CANADA 2020Canada 2020 is Canada’s leading, independent, progressive think tank working to redefine the role of the federal government for a modern Canada. We do this by hosting events, producing original research, and starting conversations about Canada’s future. Our goal is to build a progressive community of people and ideas that will move and shape governments in the future.

ABOUT GLOBAL PROGRESSGlobal Progress is an international network of progressives foundations, think tanks, and leaders committed to the exchange of ideas, research, and best practices that help promote an economic vision for shared prosperity and an inclusive approach to politics. The annual Global Progress summit brings together progressive leaders from across the globe.

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